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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Holiday Plans

I currently teach freshmen oral English at a university in China. That’s what
it says on my contract, but I aim a little higher in my actual classes. In the
last week of classes this semester, I wrote on the board the following
question:

What are your winter holiday plans?

I gave them a brief moment to read, internalise and start thinking about the
answer and then said in alarm, "Oops! I forgot to write the question
properly…" as I bounced over to the board and changed it to read:

What are your winter holiday study plans?

Which earned me a classroom-wide groan and screwed-up faces to which I gave my
biggest, most oafish grin.

I let the laughter die down and then changed into Serious Mode and said: "I’m not
joking."

You’ve Got To Be Joking

Chinese students are forced to study. A lot. In (and before) high school. All
in preparation for the university entrance exams. Once you "make it" to
university, though, everyone (the kids, the universities, the parents, society)
all sit back and relax. Finishing university is a mere formality. All the
kids have to do is coast and conform for another four years and they’ll get
their little degrees and be out the door, on their way to the Promised Land.

The Promised Land

The Promised Land is the glorious, prosperous future that has been promised to
them since early primary school; dangled as a carrot and wielded as a stick. It
isn’t until the kids are months into the post graduation job hunt that they
finally realise that the Promised Land was all a lie. There is no comfy,
well paid job waiting for them. They are not the "talents" their little piece
of paper asserts. They have simply moved from one institution to the next. And
unlike their utopian entrance to university life where they had for the first
time ever a taste of real freedoms, their transition into working life is far
more miserable: mean bosses; competitive colleagues; hard work; long hours;
little pay; familial pressure to marry and breed…

Freshmen

But as I said, I’m teaching freshmen at the moment so they don’t hear that
message yet. I tell them. Some of the Chinese teachers tell them. But they
can’t hear it yet. They’re still relaxing furiously; over-enjoying their free
life. No surprises then that they should sneer at my question:

What are your winter holiday study plans?

So to break the ice, I calmly walked over to the board and wrote my own study
plans for the winter holidays:

In every class, this opened the door for the more lively students to offer some
of their own study plans. And in every class, one or more boys brashly declared
that Computer Games would be their sole focus all winter long, which would
invariably receive knowing laughter from all in the room. These same boys and
many beside them spent the whole semester doing exactly that — why should they
aim to do anything else now that they have the permission to do so?